The assurance seemed to disperse the last doubts of the princess. She cast one more look back at her crimson Argus, and said: “Very goot; I will coom.”
She walked to the door lower down the garden wall. When she came through it, she found the Twins wheeling their bicycles toward it. The Terror, in a very dignified fashion, introduced Erebus to her as Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, and himself as Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield. He gave their full and so little-used names because he felt that, in the case of a princess, etiquette demanded it. Then they moved along the screen of trees, up the side of the garden wall toward the wood.
The Twins shortened their strides to suit the pace of the princess, which was uncommonly slow. She kept looking from one to the other with curious, rather timid, pleased eyes. She saw the landing-net that Erebus had fastened to the backbone of the Terror’s bicycle; but she saw no connection between it and the vanishing peaches.
They passed straight from the screen of trees through a gap into the home wood, a gap of a size to let them carry their bicycles through without difficulty, took a narrow, little used path into the depths of the wood, and moved down it in single file.
“I expect you never found this path,” said the Terror to the princess who was following closely on the back wheel of his bicycle.
“No, I haf not found it. I haf never been in this wood till now,” said the princess.
“You haven’t been in this wood! But it’s the home wood—the jolliest part of the estate,” cried the Terror in the liveliest surprise. “And there are two paths straight into it from the gardens.”
“But I stay always in the gardens,” said the princess sedately. “The Baroness Von Aschersleben does not walk mooch; and she will not that I go out of sight of her.”
“But you must get awfully slack, sticking in the gardens all the time,” said Erebus.
“Slack? What is slack?” said the princess.